


working for the weekend (everybody wants a little romance)

by servir



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22211419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servir/pseuds/servir
Summary: So maybe Emily is cute.Maybe, when Kelley gets an automated survey from the IT department that asks how well her service ticket was handled, Kelley gives her all five stars. It’s just what you do with these things. Even if her Uber driver runs over a curb she gives out five stars.
Relationships: Kelley O'Hara/Emily Sonnett
Comments: 29
Kudos: 170





	working for the weekend (everybody wants a little romance)

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to @slidetacklefc for the ideas and encouragement, @unbecomings for the clutch beta, and @letlaurensang for the OG spiral that led to this fic.
> 
> And a big shoutout to whichever photographer took [the Hot Boss Kelley](https://i.imgur.com/ZMoyv8l.png) photo. You're a real one, dude.

It’s not that Kelley is a bitch.

She’s not.

She _is_ tired, though, up late the night before closing a contract with someone in Japan who definitely has worse working hours than her, and she hasn’t had her coffee yet. So when she stalks into her office at 10:22am on a Wednesday and sees a too-messy-for-dress-code bun poking up from behind her monitor, she is probably a little too bitchy about it.

“Who are you,” she says, not bothering to hide the bite in her voice, “and why are you in my office?”

Bun girl doesn’t answer, just peeks up over the top of the monitor she’s hidden behind and then flops back down into Kelley’s chair, typing rapidly the entire time. “I’m almost finished, one sec.”

“Finished with what?”

There’s some rapid mouse clicking, then, “Upgrading you to Windows 10.”

Kelley’s midway through shucking her jacket off when the girl answers and Kelley feels a gasket blow somewhere in the back of her brain, depositing her briefcase into a chair and moving around the end of her desk to stare at the screen in disbelief.

“I’ve been telling you for months not to upgrade me!” Her voice is a little shrill and it finally makes the girl stop typing. She scoots Kelley’s chair back from the desk just a bit, just enough to look up at Kelley, and Kelley narrows her eyes to read the badge pinned to the collar of her shirt, a miniature version of the girl in front of her beaming up at her from the laminate.

**EMILY SONNETT**  
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

“Sorry,” Sonnett says, holding her hands up in a gesture of innocence, “Mark told me to get everyone in legal. You’re on my list.”

“You must be new,” Kelley says, and it’s rude but she’s too tired to care. She’s been off the list for eight months, and the one day she runs late someone makes themselves at home with destroying her computer.

Instead of taking the bait, Sonnett straightens up in her seat, setting her shoulders and — quite formally, too formally for how Kelley has been speaking to her — offering Kelley a hand to shake.

“Emily Sonnett,” she says, like Kelley hasn’t just read that off her badge. “I’ve worked here for two years.”

Kelley blinks at her hand. Then she sighs and turns her attention to her computer, which seems to have finished rebooting and is prompting her to log in. “Scoot,” she says, waving a hand in the same casually dismissive gesture that she likes to use on men that she wants nothing to do with at bars. “I have work to do.”

Sonnett doesn’t seem fazed, reaching for one of the pens scattered across Kelley’s desk and scribbling something onto a post it note that she proceeds to stick directly to Kelley’s screen, right over the password prompt.

“For when you need help,” she explains, plucking her coffee cup off of a pile of Kelley’s papers and swiveling around again so she can stand up without being too into Kelley’s space.

Sonnett is taller than Kelley expected, and rather than have to look up at her Kelley immediately takes back her chair, rolling it back up to the desk and yanking the post it note off of her monitor, dropping it into the recycling bin under her desk. There’s some sticky residue left behind, and she’s scratching at it with a fingernail when Sonnett pauses in her office doorway.

“What?” Kelley asks, but she’s too over it all to keep the sharpness in her voice and Sonnett gives her a look, head tilted a bit to one side and her eyebrows curving in a way that is either vaguely concerned or a little amused, and the most annoying part of all of this is that Kelley can’t tell which.

“Nothing,” she says, nudging Kelley’s stopper out from under the door with the toe of her shoe and, of all things, grinning at her through the slowly closing gap. “Have a good day, Miss Kelley.”

Kelley massages her fingers into her temples when the door closes, takes a deep breath and tries to reset her morning, and logs in.

-

It takes her fifteen minutes, about as many curse words, and one solid kick of her foot against the hardwood of her desk before she accepts defeat and digs the post it back out of the recycling bin, crumpled up and stuck to two other sheets of paper. Sonnett’s handwriting is in all caps, level and neat — somehow that’s annoying, too.

IT SONNY  
X1283

Kelley feels a tension headache building, but she jams her phone receiver between her ear and shoulder and punches in Sonnett’s extension. It rings twice before someone answers, quiet laughter and the end of someone else’s conversation filtering through the line before— 

“911, what’s your emergency?”

It makes Kelley roll her eyes but double check that she dialed the right number anyway. Sonnett is quiet on the other line while Kelley glances between the post it note and her phone screen, but before Kelley can speak, Sonnett is talking again.

“Please press 1 if you are in immediate distress.”

Kelley can’t help but huff out a laugh, and something tells her that was Sonnett’s intention. “I can’t find any of my documents,” she says, finally, “now that you ruined my computer.”

Sonnett sounds a little distracted when she answers, someone talking in the background again. “They’re all on OneDrive now, the button is in your system tray.”

Glancing at her screen, it becomes immediately evident that Kelley does not know where that is. Rather than admit that, she doubles down. “I don’t care where the button is, I want them back where they were, so come down and fix it.”

“Up,” Sonnett says, with an air like she’s being especially helpful.

“What?” Kelley grinds out.

“You’re on the 32nd floor. We’re on 30. I gotta come up.”

Kelley makes a mental note to fire her for a similarly semantic reason. “Then come up or whatever, I don’t care, just fix it.”

-

Sonnett knocks.

With her foot.

Kelley is mentally preparing to lecture her for it when she swings her office door open to Sonnett grinning at her with a cup of coffee in each hand. “Here,” she says, handing one to Kelley as she scoots past her and into the office, “you looked tired.”

“Tired?” She’s a little shrill when she says it and Sonnett looks up at her from over her monitor like some sort of groundhog day extra, only this time she raises her eyebrows in a way that makes Kelley feel a little called out for something, a little chastised. She sighs, moving around the desk to look over Sonnett’s shoulder to supervise. “Tell me what you’re doing so I can replicate it if I have to.”

Sonnett sips on her own coffee as she clicks around. “I’m just making it so when you click on your documents folder, it goes direct to the right place. They changed how the shortcuts work.”

“I noticed.”

Sonnett doesn’t say anything to that, just quietly circles which buttons to click with the pointer before she clicks them, giving Kelley time to see what she’s doing. She seems confident in her work, though, and Kelley gets the sense that it will stick and there’s no point in memorizing the process, finding herself studying Sonnett instead.

Her clothes, a button up under a sweater and jeans that probably edge closer to casual than business-casual, are a little rumpled but still work in a way that suits her, and she taps her chucks against the floor as she works; Kelley is quietly envious of her, her own ankles aching from her heels already today. She has broad shoulders and a smattering of faint freckles and— Kelley blinks— a tattoo of a cross on the back of her neck.

“Are you paying attention?” Sonnett asks, a hint of amusement in her voice.

Kelley takes a long drink from her coffee. “Aren’t visible tattoos against policy?”

Sonnett pauses at that, swiveling around in Kelley’s chair while at the same time reaching a hand back to let her hair out of her messy bun, letting it fall to her shoulders and cover the tattoo. Kelley purses her lips, and Sonnett grins up at her. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It throws Kelley, does something to her stomach, and she crosses an arm across her chest and takes another sip of her coffee to give herself a little space. Sonnett watches her, just for a moment, then turns back around to the computer, hair still slowly unwinding from her bun.

It looks soft.

Before Kelley can get anywhere with that thought, Sonnett is popping up from her chair and gesturing towards the screen, where all of Kelley’s documents are back in the right place and the post it with Sonnett’s extension is once again stuck. Kelley snatches it off again.

“You’re going to ruin it.”

Sonnett shrugs, running a hand back through her hair to shake it out and shuffling around Kelley to make her exit. “Guess I’d just have to bring you a new one, then,” she says, and then she’s shutting the door behind her and leaving Kelley to herself.

-

So maybe Emily is cute.

Maybe, when Kelley gets an automated survey from the IT department that asks how well her service ticket was handled, Kelley gives her all five stars. It’s just what you do with these things. Even if her Uber driver runs over a curb she gives out five stars. So this isn’t any different, she thinks, as she copies Emily’s extension onto another post it because the adhesive was wearing off on the one Emily wrote herself, sticking the new post it beside her phone and dropping the old one into her desk drawer.

It’s not any different until Saturday night, when a girl that is every bit her type buys her an old fashioned and puts a hand on her hip, and Kelley thinks about Emily’s broad shoulders and teasing smile and does her best polite disappearing act.

-

Kelley lasts until Tuesday morning before she crouches down under her desk, wiggles an HDMI cord slightly loose, and dials Emily’s extension.

This time, she answers right away. “McDonalds, can I take your order?”

“Hi,” Kelley says, “large fries and a working monitor, please.”

Emily laughs, and even if it’s tinny through the phone, Kelley feels a little thrill at it.

“Did my sticky notes really ruin it?” she asks, and if Kelley is thinking about Emily twirling the phone cord around her fingers or something as she teases, she’s only human.

“No, but it is a little smudgy there, thanks for that. It just won’t turn on, can you come look at it?”

-

Emily brings her another coffee, pressing it into her hand as she shoos Kelley away from her desk and sits down in Kelley’s chair, spinning it all the way around once before pulling herself towards the desk.

“Do I look tired again or something?” Kelley asks, taking a sip.

“Nah,” Emily says, jabbing at the monitor power button with her finger like that’s not the first thing Kelley pretended to try, then feeling around the base of the screen for the cables. “You’re just nicer once you’ve had your coffee.”

Kelley opens her mouth to argue, but shuts it when Emily turns around to quirk an eyebrow at her, remembering last week with a flush of shame that she’s not quite used to feeling when she’s been short with someone— she likes things in order and in control, that’s all.

“You’re right,” she admits instead, “I was kind of a bitch last week.”

Emily laughs at that, and it sounds better in person.

“It’s okay,” Emily says, standing up and scooting Kelley’s chair back so she can trace the cord in her hand under the desk to her computer. “You’ve got a stressful job, I didn’t take it personally.”

Before Kelley can continue with her apology, her monitor blinks to life and Emily starts to shuffle back out from under her desk, catching her bun on Kelley’s keyboard tray and making even more of a mess of it than usual. It’s not that Kelley wants to reach out and fix it, it’s just an observation, she tells herself.

“HDMI cable was loose,” Emily says, wiping her hands against her jeans like she’s just dirtied them rather than tinkered with electronics. “Cleaning guy must have bumped it.”

Kelley hums, tucking her free hand in her pocket and watching a strand of hair slowly free itself from Emily’s bun. “Must have,” she says. “Thanks for coming down.”

“Thought we established that this is up for me,” Emily says. Her eyes go a little bright when she smiles, and Kelley’s not sure if she’s smiling back but she must be, because something about Emily softens, some of the joking bravado goes away, as she winds her way through Kelley’s office furniture and towards the door.

“I’ll see you around,” Emily says, and then she’s making her way through the cubicles.

-

Kelley forgets her lunch on Friday, realizing as her stomach growls around noon that her quinoa salad is nowhere to be found. She finishes working up a contract and waits out her hunger for another hour before caving and making her way down to the office cafeteria, sliding a tray down the line and frowning at a large dish full of meatloaf.

“Is any of this vegan?” she asks the server, but before he can answer she hears someone down the line scoff at her.

“Oh god,” Emily says, leaning around the two people between them to pin Kelley with a look of mock disgust, “you’re one of _those_.”

“Shut up,” hisses the girl between them that’s closest to Emily, tall and blonde and serious looking despite her baby face. Kelley’s seen her somewhere, remembers her vaguely, but can’t place her name.

“No,” Emily says, making the tall girl switch places with her by nudging her in the ribs with the corner of her tray, “she’s an easy target.”

“It’s a simple question,” Kelley says, stiffening a bit as the girls that Emily is with turn their attention to her, “I just don’t want to eat animal products.”

The girl now separating Emily and Kelley is so small that Kelley has been looking over her head, but she snorts loudly enough that Kelley glances down at her, and she looks as sharp as she is when she speaks. “There’s rabbit food over there,” she says, pointing towards the salad bar.

Emily nudges her out of place too, shuffling over to stand next to Kelley and lean in, whispering conspiratorially. “Ignore them, they’re just mad it’s not pizza Friday this week.”

“The pizza here is terrible,” Kelley says, backing out of line and towards the salad bar. Emily, to her surprise, steps out of line to follow her. Her shirt collar is actually well-pressed today, and something about the casual way her ID badge is swinging from a belt loop briefly distracts Kelley until she physically bumps into the metal corner of the bar. It makes her wobble in her heels just a bit and Emily reaches out to steady her, fingers pressing into Kelley’s forearm for just a moment before letting go, then leans past her for the salad tongs like she hasn’t just thrown Kelley’s entire day for a loop.

“So those are your friends?” Kelley asks, leaning in to inspect the tomatoes.

“Tomatoes don’t come from animals, Kelley,” Emily says, then points back over her shoulder with the tongs. “Tall one is Lindsey, she’s Harvey’s PA, terrified of her. Little one is Rose, kicks my cube wall all day down in IT.”

Kelley hums thoughtfully, taking the salad tongs when Emily hands them to her and trying to go for the least sad looking leaves of spinach. “One friend per year, huh?”

Emily laughs and Kelley’s stomach lurches annoyingly, in a way she can’t write off as hunger.

“Nah, Sam’s just too anxious for the cafeteria, Uber Emily brings her lunches to accounting.” She says it casually, clearly not thinking much of the gesture, and it floors Kelley enough that she pauses with her meticulous olive selection and turns to face Emily— Emily, who is very carefully drizzling a smiley face on her to-go salad with ranch dressing. 

“You’re a good friend,” Kelley says, a little too sincere for where they are, having spoken less than a handful of times. But it’s true, and the twisting in Kelley’s gut alleviates a bit in response.

“I try,” Emily says, popping a lid on what must be Sam’s lunch and moving to go. “Have a good lunch, boss lady.”

She mock salutes before turning back to her friends, and Kelley scoffs to keep from smiling.

-

The next time she finds herself calling Emily’s extension, it’s not planned.

She could call the main line, see who the software randomly connects her to, but Emily’s extension is staring her right in the face and she’s annoyed enough that she doesn’t want to deal with anyone else. Emily’s a known quantity, that’s all.

When she answers, Emily’s voice is booming. “Lucky caller number 12, you’re on the air!”

Kelley presses her forehead to the cool wood of her desk. “Do you have me on speaker, Sonnett.”

“No,” Emily says, just as Kelley can hear who she assumes to be Rose lean over the speaker and say, “Yes.”

There’s a brief commotion and what sounds to be a bit of slapping hands before the line goes quieter and Emily wheezes into the receiver. “What’s up?”

“What’s up,” Kelley says, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice, even if this is Emily’s fault to begin with, “is that you deleted my program when you ruined my computer. The PDF to Word document one.”

“Oh,” Emily says, and Kelley can hear her typing in the background of the call. “We just use a website for that now.”

A message from Emily pops up at the bottom of her screen and Kelley clicks on it, leaning in to study Emily’s profile picture; it’s a newer version of the one on her badge, hair pulled back and eyes crinkling as she smiles. There’s a link below it that Kelley clicks on, opening Chrome and watching the sketchiest website she’s ever seen in her life load. There’s no way in hell she’s uploading secure documents to it, and she has to tamp down another spike of frustration before she lets herself speak.

“Can you just come down here? Up here? Whatever.”

-

This time, Emily doesn’t show up with coffee.

She does, however, show up with a lollipop in her mouth and an extra one for Kelley that she presses into Kelley’s hand despite her protests, shooing Kelley out of her chair and making herself at home in front of the computer.

“Shitty day?” she asks, sifting through Kelley’s open windows for the PDF she was working on.

Kelley doesn’t fight her on it, sinking down onto the edge of her desk and crossing her arms. “I’ve been trying to convert this PDF for almost an hour, New York keeps trying to push the deadline up, and my car didn’t start this morning. So yeah, super shitty day.”

“Well,” Emily says, closing the PDF and opening it up again in Adobe, “I can fix one of those problems.”

“The sucker is helping,” Kelley admits. “Strawberry is my favorite.”

Emily turns to smile at her around the lollipop in her own mouth, then takes it out to speak. “Good to know. Also, this version of Adobe has a button for converting.”

“Are you kidding me?”

She leans over, probably too far into Emily’s space for comfort, though Emily isn’t complaining. Instead she slowly circles a dropdown labeled Export and picks Word as the option, and Kelley could scream if Emily wasn’t there with her.

“Jesus,” Kelley mutters instead, dropping her head to Emily’s shoulder without thinking, “I’m such an idiot.”

It takes a moment for Kelley to register that Emily isn’t moving, gone still and a little tense, and why. When she does, she immediately backs out of Emily’s space, taking the lollipop out of her mouth and holding a hand up in apology. “Sorry,” she says, feeling a little frantic, “that was inappropriate.”

Emily just waves her off, voice gone a little wheezing but seemingly sincere. “Nah, I was just letting you have your boomer moment.”

Kelley feels her jaw drop, almost comedic in a way. “I am thirty one,” she insists, “I am _not_ a boomer! You just ruined my computer and now everything is hidden somewhere different.”

“I like to think that I improved your computer. Streamlined it. Technology is a blessing, you know.”

She’s being teased now, Kelley knows, and somehow it’s not hitting her temper button— it’s hitting her somewhere else, and that’s almost as annoying. Letting the IT girl tease her because it puts something warm and dangerous in her stomach, what a disaster.

“I just have a routine,” she says, making herself turn a mental corner. “Creature of habit, I guess.”

Emily nods, getting up from Kelley’s chair and letting them trade places.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she says, turning to leave.

“Emily,” Kelley says, stopping her in her tracks and making her turn around, twirling the lollipop in her mouth in a way that makes _Kelley’s_ mouth go a bit dry. “Thanks for your help.”

It makes Emily smile— not a toothy grin like usual, but something softer, lips pressed together and eyes going a little squinty. She rocks on her toes a bit in Kelley’s doorway, tucking her hands into her pockets in a way that makes her sweater pull against her shoulders.

“Any time.”

-

Kelley gets in late the next morning.

In her defense, she’d worked late the night before, stuck on conference calls with offices on two different continents, and it’s the end of a very long week. She’s up against a deadline that feels like it’s going to steamroll her into a pancake version of herself like a Loony Tune, and the day already feels like a wash as she suffers through two back to back meetings before even being able to sit down in her office.

Until she lifts her head and there’s another post it stuck to her monitor.

There’s a little drawing on it that Kelley recognizes as Clippy, and what can only be Emily’s neat capslock handwriting next to him: UNIPDF IS BACK. Kelley bites back a smile, tugging the post it off her monitor and scratching the sticky residue off as she logs in, and sure enough it is. Pulling up Emily’s message from the day before, she starts typing a reply.

**Kelley O’Hara, JD**  
You are my hero.

**Emily Sonnett**  
did you like the use of clippy

**Emily Sonnett**  
figured he’s old enough for you

**Kelley O’Hara, JD**  
Didn’t know you were an artist AND a comedian.

**Emily Sonnett**  
i’m multi-talented ;)

Kelley can’t see her but she knows Emily is grinning two floors down, and suddenly any reply feels dangerous. Any reply that that Kelley wants to send, at least— all escalating, all flirtatious. Instead she forces herself to close the chat window, opening Outlook instead and burying herself in work.

She’s a professional.

-

Kelley holds it together until 4:00pm.

Maybe it’s the adrenaline from making her deadline. Maybe it’s the sense that Emily has been flirting with her for two weeks, bringing her coffee and a fucking lollipop and slowly edging her out of her comfort zone. Maybe she’s lonely, overworked, and Emily’s fond teasing fills some sort of void in her life.

Maybe Kelley just knows what she wants.

Whatever it is that does it, Kelley is definitely a little too violent with her ethernet cable as she pulls it out of the wall, sending little bits of plastic from the connector all over her carpet. She doesn’t even bother coming up with some sort of excuse for that, just sits down at her desk, watches her internet disconnect, and dials Emily’s extension from memory.

Emily picks up on the first ring. “Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?”

Kelley can’t help but imagine the way Emily is smiling when she says it, can hear it in her voice. “How do you keep your job when you answer the phone like that?”

“Oh,” Emily says, “this is just the Miss Kelley special.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” Emily says, popping the last syllable in a way that Kelley would find annoying if she didn’t also think it was cute. “What’s up?”

Kelley glances at the ethernet cord in her hand.

“My internet stopped working, can you come up and troubleshoot it?”

-

Emily lets herself into Kelley’s office five minutes later.

“So you don’t knock anymore?” Kelley asks, looking up from her monitor to glance at Emily with what they both know is completely halfhearted annoyance. Emily just shrugs, then offers Kelley a napkin wrapped around what is revealed to be two Oreos.

“They’re vegan,” Emily says, “I checked.”

“Sure you didn’t dunk them in milk before you brought them up here?” Kelley asks, aiming for teasing, but Emily goes serious when she responds.

“I would never,” she says, shuffling around the end of Kelley’s desk. “Scooch?”

Kelley steps out of the way, taking a bite of cookie as she goes and waiting for Emily to piece things together. It doesn’t take very long, one glance at Kelley’s screen to confirm that the ethernet cord is unplugged and another moment to fish the busted cable out from under Kelley’s desk. Emily holds it in one hand, inspecting the number Kelley did on it, then swivels the chair to look up at her.

“You know, if you want to see me this badly, you could just ask me out,” Emily says, a smile in her voice. “Unless destroying company property is your hobby, in which case I’d ask that you stick to wiggling your HDMI cord out of place.”

“How did you know that?” 

Emily shrugs, entirely too comfortable with Kelley on the defensive. “Since when do they vacuum under anyone’s desk?”

Kelley’s not sure what to say to that, slowly registering that Emily’s had her figured out for days and continued to play along, and she can feel the heat rising in her face as Emily grins up at her. She swallows the bit of Oreo she’s been chewing, taking a deep breath and opening her mouth even though she’s afraid of what will come out of it, when Emily beats her to it.

“I mean it,” she says. “You can just ask me out.”

“But I’m your boss,” Kelley stammers.

Emily drops Kelley’s stupid ethernet cord and stands up, suddenly in Kelley’s space, confident and close and still a little teasing. Kelley has to tilt her chin up just a bit to make eye contact, so she can avoid looking directly at Emily’s mouth. “No, you’re not. You’re in legal. Mark is my boss.”

It’s a clear invitation, a logical one, and Kelley has to take it.

“Then go out with me. Tonight.”

Smiling, Emily takes a step back, letting Kelley have her own space again now that she’s figured out what to do with it. There’s little whisps of hair falling out of her bun, and Kelley’s busy thinking about how badly she wants to tuck them behind Emily’s ears when Emily speaks again.

“Okay,” Emily says. “It’s a date.”

-

Emily meets her in the lobby an hour later.

She’s taken her sweater off and untucked her button up, but she’s let her hair down— somehow she looks like a completely different person, and Kelley blinks at her dumbly for a moment, taking her in. It must make Emily self-conscious, though, and she gives Kelley a nervous smile.

“So,” she says, voice a little quieter than usual, “where to?”

Kelley forces herself back to reality.

“Um, I was just thinking drinks? If that’s okay? I actually don’t know if you drink, or if you’re hungry we can—” she can feel herself starting to ramble and cuts herself off, watching a slow grin start to spread across Emily’s face. Kelley’s beginning to feel like Emily likes her the most when she’s a bit out of her comfort zone.

“Drinks are fine,” Emily says. “Lead the way?”

So Kelley leads.

-

The bar they go to isn’t far from the office. It’s not anything fancy— it’s been open longer than Kelley has been alive and looks every bit of that age and more, but it’s clean and quiet and she’s able to tuck them into a booth in a back corner with little trouble. Kelley orders herself a Manhattan, and Emily surprises her when she orders Kelley’s usual old fashioned.

“That’s my go-to,” she says, and Emily makes eye contact over the rim of her glass.

“You have good taste.”

It’s clearly intended to be flirty and it works, making Kelley take a long sip from her own drink to deflect and keep herself from smiling too big too early into this. Something about Emily like this — dressed down, relaxed, outside of the office and the fluorescents — is disarming, and Kelley suddenly realizes that she doesn’t really know the girl sitting across from her, at least not _this_ version of her. The version that Kelley hopes is the real Emily, the version that she suddenly desperately wants to know.

“So where are you from?” she asks, like they’ve never met before tonight.

Emily humors her, though. “Atlanta born and raised. You?”

“No way,” Kelley says, setting her drink down, feeling like she has to do something else with her hands because she’s so excited, but not quite sure what that something else is. “Me too, Fayetteville.”

It makes Emily perk up immediately. “Small world.”

Kelley just smiles back at her for a moment, not realizing she’d been afraid of not making a connection until it happened, and she clears her throat. “This is going to sound lame—”

“Lame is my niche, you gotta find something else,” Emily says, cutting her off.

“Shut up,” Kelley laughs. “I’m serious.”

“Are you sure?”

Emily is teasing her again, smiling brightly at her, fingers toying with the stem of her cocktail cherry; Kelley watches the way her fingers twists, feeling warm everywhere all at once, then almost violently clears her throat, trying again.

“This is going to sound lame, but—” Emily has stopped toying with the cherry now, focused on her with a sort of intensity that surprises Kelley, a focus that helps Kelley push back her nerves and carry on. “I want to know you. Everything about you. And I don’t really— so can you tell me?”

It’s a lot to say all at once and Kelley wants to backtrack almost immediately, but they left her comfort zone a mile ago and there’s nothing to lose here— and a lot, Kelley thinks, to gain. She’s hoping Emily feels that way too when Emily interrupts her train of thought, finally plucking the cherry from her drink and pulling it from the stem with her teeth. It leaves Kelley watching her mouth, not noticing that Emily has inched a hand across the table to brush her fingers against Kelley’s until they’re touching.

Emily taps a steady beat against Kelley’s index finger with her own.

It’s gentle, and Emily smiles at her when she relaxes.

“I want to know you, too.”

-

They’re both a little buzzed when they’re ushered out at closing time. Not the type of buzzed where everything goes blurry, just the type where every emotion feels a bit bigger than it normally does— Kelley thinks there’s a distinction. The temperatures have dropped enough that Emily shivers a bit against the cold, and Kelley reaches out to rub a hand along her arm on instinct.

Emily sways towards her, and Kelley is looking at her mouth, but neither of them do anything about it before Emily sways back into her own space with the same soft smile that Kelley has started to like more than she likes making Emily laugh, as big and infectious as it is.

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Emily says, finally, glancing down at her watch.

Kelley looks down at hers, watching the minute hand slowly arc towards 2:07am. It hadn’t felt like that long at all— something about Emily had relaxed her, let time slow down and speed up at the same time, and even out here in the cold she still feels the warmth of it.

“Do you want to go home with me?”

She’s asking before she realizes, but she doesn’t regret it. Emily raises her eyebrows, a little surprised but not looking particularly offended at the idea, and Kelley’s mind is already getting away from her when Emily shakes her head.

“Sorry,” Kelley rushes to apologize, “I’m not— that’s not what I’m trying to do with you.”

“What, have sex with me?”

Emily sounds amused, seemingly comfortable with the turn they’ve taken but holding back all the same, and Kelley wants to figure her out more than anything or anyone else she’s ever come across. She must not answer quickly enough for Emily, who reaches out to take her hand and starts leading them back towards the office.

“You should ask me again next weekend,” Emily says, and Kelley lets herself be pulled along.

“What’s next weekend?”

Emily turns to grin at her, and Kelley’s stomach flips.

“When I take you out mini golfing.”

Kelley snorts. “Putt putt, how romantic.”

“You knew what you were getting yourself into,” Emily says, and she’s right— it’d be insufferable if Kelley weren’t so into it. “So, 7:00pm next Saturday? I’ll pick you up.”

The stoplight at the end of the block changes from red to green and Emily pulls them to a stop rather than step into the crosswalk, even though there’s not a car in sight. She doesn’t let go of Kelley’s hand, thumb brushing against the back of Kelley’s knuckles, and Kelley has to lean up just a bit to press a kiss to her cheek.

“It’s a date.”

-

Emily texts to make sure Kelley made it home safe, and Kelley thinks about it nonstop until Monday morning, when she sits down in her office and stares blankly at her email until she decides that she doesn’t really care anymore and slides the back off of her wireless mouse. She’s prying one of the batteries out with one hand while dialing Emily’s extension with the other, and she almost drops both the phone and the mouse when Emily picks up.

“Hey Kell,” she says, “good morning.”

The nickname immediately flusters her, and she spends entirely too long just breathing into the phone for it not to be embarrassing.

“Can you just come up here?”

Emily hums into the phone like it’s something she actually has to consider. “Do you have an IT problem?”

Kelley finishes prying the second battery out.

“Yeah, my mouse just won’t work.”

-

Emily lets herself in again, and for the first time she shows up empty-handed.

Her hair is pulled back and for once it’s neat, like she did it with intention rather than just to keep it out of her face, and she’s wearing a soft blue sweater that brings out her eyes and makes Kelley just look at her for a moment. Emily smiles, a nervous mix of confidence and teasing, and tucks her hands into her pockets as she makes her way around Kelley’s desk to perch next to her. She’s close enough that Kelley can smell her shampoo, and it’s too much.

“What,” Kelley asks, “now that you’ve got the girl, you don’t need to treat her anymore?”

“Are you dating me for Uber Emily perks?” Emily asks, leaning over to pick up Kelley’s mouse but not really doing anything with it.

Kelley blinks up at her, out of her element in her own office, and makes the decision to lean into this, all of it. “I don’t know,” she says, trying to match Emily’s tone, “that was a pretty great perk.”

“I actually think that the best gifts are experiences,” Emily says, and it’s thoughtful and teasing at the same time. “Something you won’t forget, not a cup of coffee.”

“And what’s that?” Kelley asks, like she hasn’t known where this was going the second she picked up the phone.

It’s better than she expected, though— the way Emily situates herself, framing Kelley with a hand on the arm of her chair and another pressed flat to the desk, leaning in to brush her lips against Kelley’s, just barely there until Kelley meets her halfway, curling her fingers into the wisps of hair at the back of Emily’s neck. 

They both seem inclined to draw it out, trusting Kelley’s shut door and frosted glass, and Kelley’s starting to press her whole body up into the kiss when Emily drops her hand into Kelley’s lap. She fumbles with the hand that Kelley’s stubbornly left there, clenched into a fist, until Kelley gives up and lets Emily take the batteries from her.

Kelley laughs when Emily pulls back, lips a little swollen as she reaches for Kelley’s mouse and starts slotting the batteries back into place. “You kind of need these,” she says, voice fucked up, and it makes Kelley want to pin her against a wall.

Emily must be able to tell, but she takes a steadying breath, makes a few very intentional clicks with Kelley’s now-working mouse, and hops off the edge of Kelley’s desk. “I’ll text you later, yeah?”

Kelley nods, smiling and trying to get herself situated again. Emily is halfway out of her office before Kelley finds her voice to call after her.

“Em!”

It takes a moment but Emily catches the closing door with her foot and wedges her shoulders into the opening. Everything about her goes soft, watching Kelley fit all the pieces together in her head, patient, and Kelley loves her for it.

“See you at lunch?”

Emily grins.


End file.
